Chapter Ten #3
“I liked the answer.”
“Yes.”
“Still?”
His jaw tightened faintly. “Find a hobby.”
“My hobby appears to be bothering you.”
“An expensive hobby.”
“I have time.”
“Also my fault, before you remind me.”
She smiled.
Taddeo attempted to look back at the folder in front of him.
He made it perhaps ten seconds.
His phone rang.
The change in him was immediate.
Whatever existed between them remained, but the underboss returned around it.
He looked at the screen. “Orsino.”
“Answer it.”
“I was planning to.”
“Your face suggested murder.”
“That is often my face when Orsino calls.”
He answered. “Tell me.”
Isolde should probably have left.
She stayed exactly where she was.
Taddeo listened for several seconds, then pulled a blank sheet toward him and began writing.
“What kind?” he asked.
Isolde couldn't hear the other side clearly enough to make out every word, but she caught redevelopment, then easements, then historical preservation.
Her attention sharpened.
Taddeo noticed.
He pressed the speaker control.
Orsino's voice filled the office. “Harbor parcel maps too. Anything touching western-waterfront title history. Corwin queried through three separate systems—his legitimate consulting access, public databases, and at least one archive credential that didn't belong to him.”
Isolde slid off the desk.
“When?” Taddeo asked.
“Starts about eleven weeks ago. Becomes much heavier during the final seventeen days before he disappeared.”
“Which part of the harbor?”
“Mostly western redevelopment zones. Old warehouses, customs properties, former rail-transfer sites. Some overlap Bellandi holdings. Some don't.”
Isolde came around the desk.
Taddeo looked at her before asking, “Did he access original records or only current ownership?”
“That is the interesting part,” Orsino said. “He went backward first. Historical title chains, preservation restrictions, redevelopment approvals. He accessed those before he touched several of the modern financial files.”
A chill moved along Isolde's arms.
Corwin sitting across from her at dinner.
Asking how altered municipal records could be identified.
Asking whether scans preserved physical damage.
Asking what the museum kept from before the waterfront redevelopment.
“Those records overlap the earlier diverted transactions?” Taddeo asked.
“We're matching them now.”
Isolde put one hand against the desk. “The museum has some of those.”
There was a brief pause on the line.
Orsino said, “What exactly?”
“Redevelopment surveys. Preservation assessments. Historic harbor maps. Some original supporting documents, some municipal deposits.” She was already thinking through the collections, mentally moving shelf by shelf through storage.
“When the customs district was redeveloped, several properties were evaluated for historic status. The museum took material related to the waterfront structures.”
Taddeo looked at her. “Could Corwin access them?”
“Some public records, yes. Originals would require staff access.”
“Would you have given it to him?”
“If he'd asked and had a legitimate research reason?” The answer tasted worse after she said it. “Probably.”
Taddeo's attention remained fixed on her.
Something in Isolde's memory shifted.
Not a new memory.
An old one seen from the correct angle.
The Harbor Pilot.
She straightened.
“Oh, shit.”
Taddeo's expression changed. “What?”
“The book.”
Orsino's voice came sharply through the speaker. “What book?”
Isolde barely heard him. “Corwin gave me an object he knew I'd eventually dismantle.”
Taddeo stood.
“The Harbor Pilot?”
“Yes.” She looked at him. “The spine.”
The badly repaired binding appeared in her mind with sudden, uncomfortable clarity. Faded cloth. New thread where new thread should not have been. Modern adhesive beneath a loosened repair.
Taddeo came around the desk. “Explain.”
“If I treat the book properly, I have to open the old repair.
I can't stabilize the spine without taking apart what somebody did to it.” She pressed her fingers against the desktop, trying to stop memory from becoming certainty too quickly.
“I assumed it was just a bad repair because bad repairs are common.
But Corwin knows what I do. He knows I'd notice it, and he knows I wouldn't throw the book away because the repair was ugly.”
“When did he give it to you?”
Isolde tried to reconstruct the date.
Dinner Thursday.
Corwin gone.
The last afternoon she'd seen him.
“Three days before he disappeared.”
Silence settled across the office.
The timeline arranged itself with enough precision to frighten her.
Corwin investigating western-harbor records.
Corwin asking how forged documents revealed themselves.
Corwin gaining access to historical property material.
Corwin handing his conservator sister a harbor book with a spine designed to make her eventually open it.
Orsino spoke first. “That is not nothing.”
“No,” Isolde said quietly. “It isn't.”
Taddeo leaned toward the phone. “I want every western-harbor record Corwin accessed, timestamps, repositories, parcel history, all of it. Match the records against Bellandi ownership and every company in the earlier leakage.”
“Already happening.”
“Who owned the borrowed archive credential?”
“Darren Ko. Junior analyst at Corwin's firm. Claims Corwin borrowed it because his own access was delayed.”
“Bring him in normally if you need him. No crew at his house.”
There was a small pause.